Most people think of happiness & fulfilment as money, career success, fame, connections and even social status — they spend their lives pursuing a moving target.
Here is a common path to happiness for many people — “If only I have *fill in the blank*, then I’ll be happy”.
Human desires are insatiable. And what makes your neighbour happy may not necessarily bring you happiness.
“We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires, writes William B. Irvine in his book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
It’s easy to get sucked into spending your precious time and the greater part of your career looking for the one thing that can guarantee a happy or better life.
No matter how good something makes you feel at the moment, you will in due course want something else.
Our insatiability and our tendency to worry about things beyond our control are two of the principal sources of human unhappiness.
“Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won’t be able to fulfill.
Finding happiness or fulfilment is a process which requires a deep understanding of yourself at the core level.
A key element to finding happiness is understanding what your basic drives are and ensuring that these are being satisfied.
Knowledge of what’s important to you can help you find fulfilment in life. The best way of living a better life is the one that works for you.
There’s no one size that fits all.
Finding happiness is about discovering your true self.
Knowing what you know now about yourself today: can you identity activities, things or pursuits that make you happy regardless of your financial condition?
What brought you a sense of peace and fulfilment in the past?
As you discover what is really important to you, use what you know, have learned or the deep knowledge about yourself to gradually restructure your life to do more of what brings out the best in you.
“Most people hold the illusion that if only they had more money, their life would be better and they would be happier. Then they get rich, and that doesn’t happen, and it can throw them into a serious life crisis,” writes a Quora user who claims to have made $15M after selling a tech startup in his mid-20s.
“Whether you’re rich or not, make your life what you want it to be, and don’t use money as an excuse. Go out there, get involved, be active, pursue your passion, and make a difference,” he adds.
Prosperity by itself, is not the cure-all source of a good, happy or better life. Money is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a satisfying life.
Life needs a purpose beyond money.
Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life — the reasons you get up in the morning apart from making money.
“Discovering one’s “purpose” in life essentially boils down to finding those one or two things that are bigger than yourself, and bigger than those around you. It’s not about some great achievement, but merely finding a way to spend your limited amount of time well,” writes Mark Manson.
Purpose offers a sense of direction and creates meaning. With or without money, people pursuing a purposeful or satisfying career of activity will still have a reason to get up in the morning.
A greater percentage of our happiness comes from the intentional activities we deliberately choose to do that make us lose our sense of time.
“Just sold the company I started from scratch and netted about $6 million.That is on top of about $2.5 million I already had saved/grown through investment. So total net worth about $8.5 million. How do I feel? Not so different. But some of my perspectives have changed,” writes another Quora user.
“The money sure is nice, but it hasn’t brought me final satisfaction,” he adds. “Money is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to satisfaction, he says.
Instead of waiting for major life changes to determine your happiness, you can pursue a variety in everyday life. Invest in continuous healthy habits that can guarantee satisfaction in life even when you are still in the process of major change, for better or worse.
Choose a few activities you can do that allow you to enter a “flow” state; the optimal mental state of full immersion, involvement, and enjoyment of an activity.
Happiness is not out there for us to find, it’s a state of mind.
“Research is showing pretty convincingly now that happiness is really within us, it’s not outside of us,” says Dr Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of “The How of Happiness.” “It’s in what we do. It’s sort of how we act, how we think every day of our lives,” she adds.
One way to act to experience life to the fullest is to appreciate what you already have whilst you are still pursuing better work, career or life.
You can never truly experience happiness if you fail to appreciate what they already have.
Immanuel Kant once said, “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
“We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get,” argues Irvine.
The more you practice gratitude, the more you will start to observe the beauty and blessings you already have. Gratitude slowly becomes part of your mindset if you can make time to appreciate how far you’ve come and the people you have in your life at the moment.
Charles Dickens puts this well: “Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
Something you want to accomplish is great, but don’t forget to appreciate what you already have — it can provide you with a sense of fulfilment.
Ultimately you are responsible for your own happiness — whatever that means to you. Do more of what gives you true satisfaction and contentment.
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This post was previously published on Personal Growth and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Geraldine Sy